Kevin Ovenden

Come together or stay apart?

The movement for gay liberation started at a bar in New York
when lesbians and gays fought back against police harassment. Kevin
Ovenden traces the developments since, and argues that ‘identity
politics’ are not enough to fight sexual oppression

In June 1969 a routine police raid on the popular gay bar, the
Stonewall Inn on New York’s Christopher Street, touched off three
nights of riots and demonstrations. The modern gay liberation
movement was born. In the immediate aftermath of the Stonewall riot
the Gay Liberation Front was formed and exported to Britain in the
autumn of 1970.

Now, 25 years on, the oppression of lesbians and gay men is still
very much a part of everyday life. The failure of parliament to
equalise the age of consent at 16 is one instance. The continued
backlash over Aids and increased gay bashing is another. The
concerted effort by the Tory government and the ‘moral right’ to
destroy the social gains of the 1960s and go back to the basics of a
repressive Victorian morality has had its effect on lesbians and
gays. But despite a growing anger at these attacks the lesbian and
gay movement has failed to draw wider forces into the struggle. Once
characterised by the slogan, ‘come together’, it is now more
fragmented than ever.

The GLF styled itself a revolutionary movement, albeit in a highly
confused way. The name itself echoed the Vietnamese National
Liberation Front and the GLF declared its solidarity with all
movements of the oppressed and exploited. In some quarters this
solidarity was reciprocated. Huey Newton of the Black Panthers wrote
from his prison cell in 1970 to express his support for the new gay
movement. However, the vision of revolutionary change was very vague.
In many ways it flowed out of the least political aspect of the 1960s
revolt, the ‘counter-culture’, which emphasised ‘dropping out’
and establishing an alternative lifestyle.

These ideas went hand in hand with a commitment to build a
movement to confront anti-gay bigotry. In Britain the GLF organised
sit-ins in bars which refused to serve gays, various marches and
protests and contingents on demonstrations like the TUC’s march
against the Tory Industrial Relations Bill.

The excitement of the new movement temporarily made up for the
lack of any clear idea of how to overcome lesbian and gay oppression
or indeed where that oppression came from in the first place. But as
the initial enthusiasm waned and the movement had to confront real
questions, the confusion took its toll. Many activists began to see
homophobia not as a product of the nuclear family under capitalism
but as an inherent attitude in all straights.

Consequently for them the fight for gay liberation was a fight
against all straights irrespective of class. ‘Radical drag’ and
‘radical queenery’ were designed to shock the ‘straight world’
rather than win sections of workers to fight for gay rights. It also
provoked a split in the movement. Further splits took place as
lesbians effectively left the GLF to focus on the women’s movement.
The shapeless nature of GLF did not lead to greater democracy but to
the emergence of articulate middle class leaders not accountable to
any democratic structure. The GLF fell apart in 1972.

In two years it had succeeded in making lesbian and gay liberation
a central political issue and had encouraged thousands of, mainly
middle class, people to come out openly as gay. It popularised the
use of the word ‘gay’ as a badge of pride in opposition to
oppressive terms like ‘queer’. It was also an advance on the
highly respectable and conservative lobbying organisations like the
Committee for Homosexual Equality, which had led the field in the
1950s and 1960s. However, its lasting impact was in the explosion of
the gay scene.

The two main campaigning organisations for gay rights today are
Stonewall and OutRage! Stonewall is essentially an old style lobbying
organisation which focuses on winning the support of celebrities and
MPs to win legal reforms. In order to keep the more conservative
elements on board, it has distanced itself from militant protest.
Stonewall’s leaders condemned lesbians and gay men who rioted
following parliament’s vote against equalising the age of consent.

OutRage! bases its campaigns on direct action, adopting some of
the tactics of the GLF: kiss-ins, pickets and demonstrations. In its
four year existence it has called some protests which have drawn in
significant numbers of people. However, it has not succeeded in
building anything like a national movement or in organising the
considerable number of lesbians and gay men who want to fight back.

The confused theories of the early movement have been sharpened
into a set of ideas – identity politics. The idea that simply
asserting your identity is the way to overcome oppression leads away
from collective struggle. For those who can afford it, it is possible
to assert your identity on the gay scene. Clubbing, shopping and
fashion become seen as liberating activities but they are
inaccessible to the majority of lesbians and gay men. Furthermore
identity politics centres on enlarging the pink economy, making money
for gay businessmen, rather than challenging homophobia in the rest
of society. The glorification of a particular lifestyle is directly
counterposed to winning the widest possible support for the struggle
for gay rights.

Frequently the identity which is seen as liberating in fact
reflects the pressure of homophobia in society. The idea of a
particular gay sensibility often boils down to accepting the
reactionary idea that gay men are more caring and artistic and
lesbians aggressive and ambitious.

The use of the word ‘queer’ by many activists is symptomatic
of the isolation of the movement. People can choose to call
themselves queer within the confines of the ghetto but ‘queer
politics’ is less than attractive to the majority of lesbians and
gay men who have no choice about being labelled queer as a term of abuse.

The focus on identity politics leads groups like Outrage! to see
protests simply as stunts which can provide publicity. Only small
numbers are needed for such stunts and this reinforces the move away
from mass struggle. The result is moralism with a handful of
activists seeing themselves as acting on everyone else’s behalf and
blaming the mass of gays and straights for not becoming involved.

Another consequence is to see the struggle for gay liberation as
entirely separate from other struggles. This weakens the fight for
gay liberation itself. When workers are thrown into struggle they
become more receptive to the need to fight for gay rights and against
all the divisions which the ruling class creates. A breakthrough on
one front weakens the bosses and opens the way for advances on all sides.

It is necessary to place the fight for gay liberation within the
overall political picture. Failure to do this has led to serious
mistakes. The campaign against homophobic black rappers Buju Banton
and Shabba Ranks failed to take into account the tremendous racist
backlash against rap music. Calls for banning them added to the howls
from the right wing. Instead of winning young blacks to see that
black people and gays face a common enemy, it wrote them off as
irredeemable bigots.

The last few years have seen explosions of anger against
particular attacks such as Clause 28 in 1988, and the recent
demonstrations against police harassment in Manchester. But the ideas
that dominate the gay scene have held these outbursts back.
Separatist arguments have been directed against involving straight
workers and against the need for socialist organisation. The need for
a politics which breaks out of the ghetto and unites those fighting
back, rather than emphasising their differences, has never been clearer.